Daniel Silva On 'Double-Edged Sword' Of Writing An Israeli Spy Protagonist

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Another summer, another best-seller from Daniel Silva. This time, the most famous woman in the world - a still monied, titled and gorgeous member of the British royal family - in a well-heeled, much-publicized, globe-roving good works exile from the family, is sunk on her yacht. British intelligence needs a little help - actually, they need a lot of help - from a man who is an unassuming art restorer at the same time he is - to those who have to know - a legendary and indispensable Israeli spy, Gabriel Allon. It is Daniel Silva's fifteenth novel in what's become the Gabriel Allon franchise. This one is called, "The English Spy." Daniel Silva joins us in our studios.

Thanks so much for being with us.

DANIEL SILVA: My pleasure.

SIMON: You acknowledge in the acknowledgments that the basic premise is if Princess Diana's death and Lord Louis Mountbatten's assassination kind of got mixed up in the same ball of the plot.

SILVA: With a few additional characteristics that I borrowed from other members of the royal family thrown in. I mean, she is obviously reminiscent of Princess Diana. She is unnamed in the novel. She has no name. But really, the inspiration for that opening sequence of the novel is the assassination of Mountbatten, who was, of course, killed on a boat - not a 150-foot yacht, but a fishing boat off the Irish Coast. The culprits in that case were the Irish Republican Army, of course. And the culprit in this case is a former member of the Irish Republican Army. And as the story unfolds, we discover why he did what he did.

SIMON: Tell us about your relationship with Gabriel Allon. I mean, when you - your 15th Gabriel Allon novel - when you get up in the morning, is your first thought his, vice versa?

SILVA: One of the things that I explain to my wife when she has occasion to reprimand me for being absent-minded about something or forgetting to do something, or forgetting to take out the garbage, is that I spend more time in his world than I do in my world. So he and I are joined at the hip. He is very, very real to me, as are the characters that I've surrounded him with.

SIMON: Are there occasions when, just in private life, you'll come up with a line that's really his - Gabriel Allon's?

SILVA: His words would not leave my mouth. I mean, I've said this any number of occasions because I write about a controversial subject. I mean, Israel is controversial. I did not set out to write a series about Gabriel Allon. He was supposed to appear in one book and one book only, and he morphed into a serious character. Having an Israeli character, continuing characters - obviously a double-edged sword. There's a great deal of anti-Israeli sentiment, a rising tide, frankly, of anti-Semitism in the world, especially in Western Europe. But at the same time, that makes the character and the stories interesting and gives them edge and gives them mood. But I must point out that - you know, and people ask me this all the time - well, when Gabriel says this, is that what you think? His mentor, Ari Shamron, you know, when Ari Shamron says this about the world, do you believe that? And the answer is no, not necessarily. They are who they are. You know, Thomas Harris wrote books about a character that liked to eat people. And I am not sure that anyone ever asked Thomas Harris, you know, do you like to eat people?

SIMON: Because of your experience before you began to write novels as a journalist at CNN and UPI, your - because of that background, your novels also invite a lot of questions about the real world. You say quite bluntly toward the end of this book - you talk about Russia. This is in the acknowledgments. I want to quote something you said, "Putin is winning and Ukraine is only a preview of coming attractions."

SILVA: I hope I'm proven wrong, but I don't think I will be. I just see Putin as constantly testing us, seeing how far he can go before he prompts a reaction. I truly believe that his ultimate goal is to crack the old Atlantic alliance. I believe that he does want to get as much of the old Soviet empire back as possible. And I think that ultimately, the big flashpoint will happen in the Baltics.

SIMON: Recognizing that the books have been hugely successful, is it also at some level a burden to have a successful franchise?

SILVA: Of course. One would like to choose one's material without having to say or to consider the fact that one's readership is going to be an utter revolt if one stops writing this character. And I think that the easiest solution to that would be to write two or three books a year, as some authors do, or to publish two or three books a year. I'm simply not capable of that. And so I've never been able to figure out how to write a Gabriel Allon novel every year while at the same time writing something else. And at a certain point, I will write something else. I'm very grateful to my readers and I don't want to disappoint them. And so it's - every year, I finish a Gabriel Allon novel. I have about five or six, you know, blue cards with novels jotted-out on them. I long to get to them, and then I go out on tour and I meet my fans face to face, and I talk to them and listen to them. And I come home and I realize that there's - at this point I cannot write anything but Gabriel for a little while longer, at least.

SIMON: Daniel Silva, his new novel, "The English Spy."

Thanks so much for being with us.

SILVA: Thank you for having me. What a pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.